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This week in Congress

Reid and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wanted to recruit former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) as their candidate to replace Johnson in 2014. As he spent weeks attempting to clear the field for Herseth Sandlin, Reid met privately with Johnson and his wife to ask them to persuade their son Brendan not to run for the seat, sources say. Or at the very least, let Herseth Sandlin make her decision on whether to get into the race before deciding whether Brendan Johnson should jump in.

But against Reid’s will, Daschle — Reid’s predecessor as Democratic leader and a South Dakota native — was privately encouraging a longtime former aide and personal friend, Rick Weiland, to mount a bid of his own.

Daschle’s endorsement of Weiland helped persuade Herseth Sandlin to pass on the Senate race, according to Democratic sources close to the issue. Reid and top Senate Democrats were stunned and outraged by Daschle’s move, a sentiment Reid communicated directly to the former senator, according to several people familiar with the incident.

In a brief interview last week, Reid didn’t hide his frustration with the way the South Dakota race is shaping up.

“We’re going to have a candidate there; we don’t have it yet,” Reid told POLITICO.

When asked whether he would ever back Weiland, Reid was emphatic in his opposition.

“He’s not my choice,” Reid said.

One top Democrat involved in the race, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This is [Daschle’s] race. If he wants to encourage someone to get in, if he wants to endorse someone to get in, he should be prepared to raise all the money necessary to support them.”

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who chairs the DSCC, would say only this when asked if he would back Weiland in South Dakota: “We are looking at all our races.”

Daschle acknowledged that he was aware Reid and the DSCC backed Herseth Sandlin’s potential candidacy, although he said he didn’t realize she would be “their only candidate.”

“Harry and I have not had a conversation about this in several weeks,” Daschle said. “And so it came as a little bit of a surprise to me that they had made that decision [to back Herseth Sandlin]. I had heard from a number of people that Stephanie wasn’t even sure she wanted to run, so it’s curious to me that they weren’t clear about her intentions before they made her the definitive candidate.”

The spat between Reid and Daschle — who refer to each other as “brothers” and have been close professionally for years — shows what’s at stake in the 2014 elections as Senate Democrats are forced to defend their majority in red states like South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina and West Virginia. Republicans are hoping to cut into the Democrats’ 55-45 seat majority — if not take control of the Senate outright — threatening President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda in the process.